Hitachino Nest Red Rice Ale

Brewed by Kiuchi Brewery
Style: Traditional Ale
Ibaraki, Japan

bottle. Aroma: Cotton candy, mint, slight barnyardy funk, dusty, cherries, and rice. There’s more there, but I can’t put words to it. Strange, to say the least. Appearance: Amber-orange and quite hazy. Off-white head was small and rocky. Not much lacing. Flavor: Rice flavor is strong, slight pepperiness, bread dough, mint, a touch of funk, and a slight sourness with a bit of apricot. Again...strange. Palate: Medium-light body. Medium carbonation. Finish was pretty dry with a strong taste of rice. Overall: Worth trying just for the experience. Unlike anything I’ve ever had before.

Bottle. Powerful aroma, strong yeast and exotic fruitiness. Heavily carbonated pinkish red pour with a pretty, lacing, rocky, reddish tanned head. Crisp with an early onset of bitterness and sourness. Additional taste of phenols, nuts, astringency, spice, and a Mystery Adjunct I’m going to go ahead and call "red rice." Very complex. Some barnyard notes, tartness, bitter rind, healthy dose of malt, unusual yeastiness. This shares features with a young gueuze, though it follows its own beat... brewer really knows how to create multi-faceted, character-filled one-of-a-kinds. Really dries out the mouth and leaves the impression of having just been swabbed with cotton, or a certain type of medical gloves. Gravelly dryness in the throat reminds one of the inherent spices. Medium body, light sweetness, long and unique aftertaste. Seven percent is hidden masterfully. Certainly not something I’d want to drink every day, but by all means, a distinctive, interesting offering.

12 ounce bottle purchased in Davis, CA for $4.19. Shared with Grant. Very interesting aroma to this--rice is definitely apparent in the nose with some saltiness, anise, and burnt tire aroma with some mild herbal hoppiness late. Hazy, murky reddish body with an off-white head. Rather awkward looking, but kind of fun to look at. Peppery, bitter, weird, minty/spearmint flavors to start. Finish medicinal and is a dead ringer for Robitussin DM. Thankfully I only had to labor through 6 ounces of this shit.

On tap at Spuyten...this is a strange beer indeed. The rice flavor comes through in both the aroma and the flavor. There’s something also here very much like rice candy, as notalush points out. The beer is sweet and chewy, with unusual fruit esters coming through. Dark orange in body color, very cloudy.

Tap at Spuyten - quite an odd beer - cloudy orange with minimal head - the aroma is quite fruity, mostly of orange, with very yeasty, earthy qualities, and an odd sweetness that combines with a faint rice smell that reminds me of asian rice candy - moderately tart and vinous - mild sweet citrus - an almost brett-like funk way in the back - rice is quite evident, but more like rice-dough used in asian pastries - quite different, but not in an entirely good way like some other traditional ales are (hotd adam, heavyweight jakeldricka, etc.).

This bottled brew from a bottle shop poured a large sized head of foamy fine to medium sized off-white colored bubbles that was mostly diminishing and left behind a transparent bubbly strongly carbonated light orange brown colored body. The aroma was musty.. The mouth feel was tingly at the start and at the finish. The flavor contained notes of bread dough malt hops and spices. An OK brew just nothing special.

Kinda hazy looking with some sediment. Beer starts sweet. Light bodied, moderately carbonated. Pale malts in the middle. Ends on somewhat of a dry sour woodlike note, not unlike rhubarb. This is definetely something a little bit different, but I enjoyed it.

From the bottle (at Kisaku in Seattle; kudos to them for carrying something better than the typical Kirin/Asahi/Sapporo macros.)

This beer pours a hazy amber with a rose tint and a modest head.

The aroma is distinctly unusual -- slightly sour, hinting at rice vinegar, sufficiently far from commonplace that my vocabulary lacks quite the right descriptors for it. Upon the first sip, I get something similar: fruit, mild vinegar, sweet rice. But as I keep drinking, I grow fonder and fonder of the beer. There’s a dry woodiness beneath the mildly sour profile; the sweetness from the rice accents the front side of each sip before yielding to a dry if gentle sourness that finishes with a well-rounded mild bitter. The mouthfeel is full but not sticky, refreshing despite the 7%, very little alcohol burn or aroma.

I’m struggling for words here again in my efforts to describe the flavor, but this was a very positive experience. I’m certainly looking forward to trying this one again and getting a better handle on what this beer is all about.